How the European debt crisis reshaped national political space: The case of Greece
| Author | Simon Otjes,Alexia Katsanidou |
| Date | 01 June 2016 |
| Published date | 01 June 2016 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1465116515616196 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
European Union Politics
2016, Vol. 17(2) 262–284
!The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/1465116515616196
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Article
How the European debt
crisis reshaped national
political space: The case
of Greece
Alexia Katsanidou
GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, Germany
Simon Otjes
University of Groningen, the Netherlands
Abstract
Where some authors saw a limited impact of Europeanisation on national party politics,
others proposed that in addition to the pre-existing economic left-right dimension a
separate European Union dimension structures the national political space. This article
looks at the Greek bail-out during the European sovereign debt crisis to examine how
Europeanisation can change the national political space. The bail-out came with
memoranda that set the main lines of Greek economic policy for the coming years.
Accepting these policies was connected with remaining in the Eurozone. This restruc-
tured the political space: the economic and European integration form one dimension.
A second relevant dimension focuses on cultural issues. The economic/European
dimension is a stronger predictor of vote choice than the cultural dimension.
Keywords
Dimensions, economic crisis, Europeanisation, Greece, party politics, voting behaviour
Introduction
The extent to which European integration has shaped the national political space
is a matter of academic debate: Mair (2000) has argued that the impact of
European integration on national party politics is only limited. Other authors,
most prominently Kriesi et al. (2008), see the formation of a European integra-
tion dimension. This dimension exists in addition to the left-right dimension and
Corresponding author:
Alexia Katsanidou, GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, Unter Sachsenhausen 6-8, Cologne
50667, Germany.
Email: alexia.katsanidou@gesis.org
its core debate is the issue of Europeanisation, the process by which individuals
and institutions respond to the altered conditions generated by European inte-
gration (Ladrech, 2002). Specifically, it concerns the Europeanisation of the
national political space, the process by which the positions towards European
integration structure how voters and parties think about other political issues.
This article looks at an extreme case: the bail-out of Greece by the European
Union (EU).
This article examines a transformational moment in Greek and EU politics
brought on by the biggest economic crisis since the 1930s. It offers an extreme
case to explore the effect of European integration on the national political space:
the fierceness of the crisis and the complete dependency of Greece on the bail-out
deal with its European partners made European integration a central issue on the
Greek political agenda. Economic issues became intertwined with the question of
continued Eurozone membership. In the 2012 Greek elections, supporting
Eurozone membership implied committing to a set of economic policies, and reject-
ing these policies also meant rejecting Eurozone membership. In this way,
European integration may have become the issue that structured the views of
voters and parties on the most important economic questions. In summary, this
article sets out to identify the process of Europeanisation by determining to what
extent the question of European integration structures voter and party policy positions
in post-crisis Greece.
The political results of the Greek sovereign debt crisis contrast the existing
wisdom concerning the effect of Europeanisation on national politics as proposed
by Kriesi et al. (2008). In their view the question of European integration is part of
a new dimension that also concerns cultural issues such as immigration but is
separate from the economic left-right dimension. They believe economic integra-
tion has reinforced this dimension because of stronger economic competition
(Kriesi et al., 2008). The Greek case offers us a different mechanism, whereby
voter and party positions towards the EU structure the economic dimension as
the result of the expanded European control over economic policy.
The relevance of this study does not end at the Greek borders despite the fact
that Greece is an extreme case for finding an effect of the European sovereign debt
crisis on a European party system (Gerring, 2007). Similar patterns may be visible
in other European countries that were bailed out. Moreover, our argument does
not just concern crisis solutions, but rather the growing influence of the EU over
budgetary policy. This affects all Eurozone countries, including Northern countries
that have pressed for stronger budgetary guidelines. There is evidence that a similar
pro/anti-EU dimension has structured party positions on economic policies in the
Dutch 2012 elections (Otjes, 2015).
Left, Right and Europeanisation
Our key argument is that the processes set in motion during the on-going financial
crisis have resulted in a situation in which the political issue of European
Katsanidou and Otjes 263
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